


and all the world a treasure

by Attila



Series: leave behind a legend (a tale for all to tell) [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirates, F/F, Fluff, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 21:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8913826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Attila/pseuds/Attila
Summary: The pirate ship Vox Machina gets a bear; Trinket gets a hat.





	

Vex makes it back to the ship in time for castoff, luckily, but also while everyone else is getting things ready, so they’re all on deck, and they look up to stare at her as she creeps awkwardly on board, her arms aching with the heavy weight in them. “Zahra, darling,” she calls out, trying to keep her voice light.

“Oh, holy fucking—” Kash says. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Dear lord,” Percy says, putting his head in his hands, but then he starts laughing, which is slightly more promising.

“Stubby,” Vax says, appearing suddenly at her side out of nowhere like the creepy bastard he is. “Didn’t you say yesterday that you were going for a _walk_?”

“Yes, well, I did,” she says. “In the woods.”

“Uh-huh,” he says, looking down at her burden and then back up at her. He raises an extremely skeptical eyebrow at her, and she feels herself flush, but she tosses her hair and meets his gaze steadily.

“He’s mine now,” she says firmly. In her arms, the bear cub wuffles and nudges his nose into her armpit, and her heart melts like chocolate in the sun. “His name’s Trinket.”

“You gave it a _name_?” Scanlan says.

She glares. “I gave _him_ a name.”

“I’m just saying, won’t that make it a little harder to eat?” he says, and only the extremely heavy weight of Trinket on her arms keeps her from lunging at him and trying to throttle him with her bare hands.

“What’s going on—Vex’ahlia,” Zahra says, finally walking over and coming to a stop a few feet away. She looks Vex over slowly, her eyes lingering on Trinket for a moment, and then she says, “You’d been gone so long, we were beginning to worry.”

“The girl comes back with a bear cub named Trinket,” Kash says, “and that’s all you’ve got? Seriously? It’s a _bear_. She named it _Trinket_.”

“I named _him_ Trinket,” Vex repeats. “He’s not an it. Are you, darling?” She leans down and kisses his soft head, and then she looks back up at Zahra. “I got a little…distracted.”

“Yes,” Zahra says. “I see that.” She pauses, and then she smiles, just slightly, and says, “So, however did you and Trinket meet? Will he be staying long?”

And Vex loves her, completely and helplessly, with every inch of her battered heart. Zahra’s fingerprints are all over it, pressed into the muscle like it’s hot wax, and Vex thinks, somehow, she’d like to follow the marks right back to those clever fingers and that sly smile.

“ _Staying_?” Kash says. “Z, come on.”

“He’s so cute,” Keyleth says, ignoring her boyfriend and coming over. “Can I pet him?”

“Sure,” Vex says. “Trinket, darling, this is my friend Keyleth, all right? Say hello.”

Trinket noses Keyleth, who makes a high-pitched squealing sound and immediately begins to rub his ears.

“Good boy,” Vex says quietly, and she looks up at Zahra again. “I found him in the woods. Hunters killed his mother, so I rescued him.” She bites her lip. “Darling, he’s just a baby, and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. I can take good care of him.”

“Oh, come on,” Scanlan says. “We live on a _ship_. I mean, sure, the bear’s cute and all, but isn’t this a little much? Why don’t we just leave him with Gilmore? Or in the woods, where he belongs?”

“Sure, throw my boyfriend under the bus,” Vax says. When Vex glares at him, he holds his hands up defensively and says, “By which I mean, my lovely sister clearly has her heart set on keeping the bear here, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

“I think he’s sweet,” Keyleth says, making kissing noises at Trinket and booping his nose. “He’s so fluffy!”

Kash sighs, closing his eyes and tilting his head back. “I’m regretting literally all of my life choices right now.”

“Vex,” Zahra says evenly, completely ignoring her crew’s antics. “Darling, I’m not saying no, but have you thought this through? Scanlan does have a point. We live in the middle of the ocean, not in a forest, and he’s going to get a lot bigger. It’s not exactly the ideal environment for a bear.”

“Bears are good swimmers,” she protests, clutching him tighter to her chest, even though her arms are absolutely killing her, and she doesn’t think she could lift a _diamond_ right now if someone dangled one in front of her. “It’ll be fine, I swear. He’s been _so good_ , and—and he lost his mother, and I just couldn’t leave him there all alone. I couldn’t.” Trinket blows out a warm puff of air, like a sigh of impatience, and she presses her lips tight together. “I promised him that I’d take care of him now.”

“He’s a bear,” Kash says, dry as anything. “I don’t think he understood you.”

“ _Zahra_ ,” Vex says, desperate.

“This is very important to you,” Zahra says, watching her.

“Yes,” Vex says, because if there’s anything she’s learned from her time on this crew, it’s that there’s times for jokes, and there’s times for her honest, emotional truth—there’s times when that’s what Zahra needs to hear. And this isn’t a love confession or saying she wants to stay or explaining how very much being here means to her, but Trinket’s warm and trusting in her arms, and that’s nearly the same thing. “Yes, Zahra, _yes_ , this is as important as anything else has ever been.”

Zahra nods slowly. “One moment? I’ll be right back.”

She walks away, and Vex looks around at everyone else. Percy is smiling ruefully, and Keyleth is still making soft noises as she plays with one of Trinket’s paws, but Kash is rolling his eyes, and Scanlan looks impatient and deeply skeptical. She glances over at her brother for reassurance, but he just shrugs slightly and reaches over to rub her shoulder awkwardly. Grog and Pike must be somewhere below decks, moving things around, but she wishes they were here, so Pike could smile comfortingly or Grog could say something stupid to break the silence.

“Keyleth,” Kash starts to say.

“If you don’t stop complaining about the _sweet, orphan_ bear, I’m going to dump you,” Keyleth says cheerfully, still bent over Trinket. Percy snickers, putting a hand over his mouth and apparently happy to watch the show.

“No, you aren’t,” Kash mutters, but he leans back against the railing and shuts up.

“I feel like this is objectively the stupidest thing anyone on this ship has ever done,” Scanlan says musingly.

“Okay, even I think that’s wrong,” Kash says.

“It’s a _bear_ ,” Scanlan says. “This is a _pirate ship_.”

“Yeah, but,” Kash says. “It’s us.”

“The man makes a good point,” Percy says, nodding sagely. “For example, there’s everything else we’ve ever done.”

“Just to start with,” Vax agrees.

Zahra comes back just then, something dark in her hands. When she gets closer, she holds it up, smiling.

“That’s a hat,” Vex says numbly, staring at it. “A tricorn hat.”

Zahra settles it gently onto Trinket’s head. “Hello, Trinket,” she says, and then she looks up at Vex, smirking just a little. “Pirates need hats, don’t you think, darling? Even pirate bears.”

Vex’s mouth drops open, and for a moment, she’s too stunned to move—rooted to the deck like there’s lead in her boots, like Zahra’s quiet, boundless love is lethal. “Darling,” she chokes out, and then she thrusts Trinket into Vax’s arms and throws herself forward, flinging her arms around Zahra’s shoulders and burying her face in the crook of Zahra’s neck. “I love you,” she hears herself say. “I love you _so much_ —there aren’t _words_. You’re so—I just—I’d rather have you than all the money in the world.”

“Well,” Zahra says quietly, holding on just as hard, her fingers digging into Vex’s spine, pressing grooves into her bones, marking her place for when they have to let go again. “In the face of all that, welcoming Trinket to the crew is really the least I can do.”

Vex pulls back, laughing a little and wiping her eyes. “You are the loveliest, most wonderful person I have ever met in my entire life.”

“I’m standing right here,” her brother says, and she rolls her eyes.

“You aren’t lovely _or_ wonderful,” she says tartly, looking over, only to see that Trinket’s hat, not actually made for a bear’s head, has fallen off. “Oh, _no_.”

Zahra follows her gaze, her fingertips still resting lightly on Vex’s hips. “Ah,” she says. “Yes, we’ll have to do something about that.”

—

Vax leads them back to Gilmore’s in a really excessively long-suffering fashion, but he also keeps carrying Trinket so that her arms can have a break, so she knows he doesn’t really mind all that much.

Mid-morning in Daggerbay is always dead—the kind of dead that seems even weirder because she knows just how crazy it a few hours ago. Even dawn is rowdy, because people are still caught up with their partying from the night before, but offshore, it’s just not _cool_ to be awake at ten, no matter how good the ale is. The streets are a mess, but scarily empty, except for the odd drunk whose friends left him to sleep it off in the gutter. She loves Daggerbay, honestly, and it’s her home on dry land, but it’s never quite stopped being bizarre to be in a city with absolutely no day life whatsoever.

Gilmore’s is equally quiet, the way it always is this time of day. A few people slumped over at the tables and either sleeping or ignoring the world, the sign discouraging thieves, and that’s it for what’s normally one of the most popular bars in the city. Gilmore and Sherri, of course, are nowhere to be seen.

Vax seems unconcerned, though, and just lifts up Trinket a little. “Who wants to hold the bear while I get my boyfriend?”

“He can stand up by himself,” Vex says. “I just didn’t want to try and make him keep up with us, since his legs are still so much shorter, and he’s just a baby, really.” She puts one of her hands on each side of Trinket’s huge fuzzy head and kisses his nose. “Hmm, Trinket? Do you want to get down for a little, huh? Does that sound good?”

“Oh, that’s so sweet,” Scanlan says. “Almost as sweet as, say, _leaving him here_ would be.”

Vex glares at him. “Why did you even come?”

“I am a gift and pleasure to have during all occasions,” Scanlan says loftily, and then he ruins it—if there’d really been anything to ruin—by adding, “and also, I want to try and convince your crazy girlfriend that we shouldn’t take the bear.”

“Her crazy girlfriend’s the boss,” Zahra says pleasantly, “and I like the bear.”

“You just like Vex’s ass,” Scanlan says.

Vax scowls and puts Trinket down onto the floor. “Scanlan, you know I could take you in a fight, right? Don’t talk about my sister’s ass, or you’ll get a dagger in _yours_ when you least expect it.”

“What?” Scanlan says. “It’s true. And you could not take me in a fight, please, Vax. Bigby would kill you. But, you know, in a nice way. Because I like you.”

“I frequently wish you didn’t,” Vax tells him. “Stubby, are you good here?”

“I’ll try not to kill Scanlan until you get back and can help,” she says dryly.

“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” he says, squeezing her shoulder before he walks off behind the bar and disappears through the beaded curtain that must lead to wherever Gilmore actually lives.

She makes a face at his back, but in the interest of this not taking a million years while they snipe at each other, leaves it at that. Instead, she kneels down and cuddles Trinket into her arms, wrapping them around his already large, extremely solid body. “How are you doing?” she whispers. “Did you like the ship okay?”

He makes a grumbling noise that sounds basically positive, and she smiles into his fur.

When her brother comes back, it’s with a yawning Gilmore, who stops dead when he sees them and stares for a moment or two. At last he says, sounding amused, “So, when you said you were leaving, but your sister came back with a bear, and now you need a hat for him before you can cast off, you really weren’t joking, were you.”

“I really wasn’t,” Vax says. Gilmore is wearing a ludicrously purple dressing gown, but Vax mostly looks charmed and a little like he’d enjoy sticking around to take it off him, which just goes to show that she’s always been the sensible twin.

“Mm-hmm,” Gilmore says. “Your life is _fascinating_ to me, you know, Vax’ildan.”

“Hey, a little less of the talking about me like an odd species of wildlife,” Vax says, though he doesn’t sound even remotely offended.

“Your bear needs a hat,” Gilmore says. “I’m not utterly convinced that you _aren’t_. Why a hat?”

“Vex and Zahra have this whole weird hat thing going on,” Vax says. “It’s probably kinky, so I try not to ask.”

“The hat we have won’t stay on Trinket’s head,” Vex says, breaking into their nonsense to try and get to the heart of the matter. Zahra holds it up helpfully, like the absolute dear she is, and Gilmore nods thoughtfully.

“I see,” he says. “You do realize this isn’t a haberdashery, yes?”

“You do magic,” she protests.

“Ah, yes,” he says. “Hat magic. It is my most widely spoken of skill.”

“Vax said you could help,” she says.

“I did say that,” Vax says, leaning into Gilmore’s space with a smirk and reaching up to play with a bit of Gilmore’s hair, kissing his cheek.

Gilmore shakes his head, but he’s laughing. “Oh, Vax. It’s a good thing I like you so much.”

“But you _do_ like me so much,” Vax says smugly. “So you’ll help my sister with her bear hat problem, right?”

“I will help your sister with her bear hat problem,” Gilmore says solemnly. “Must it be a magical solution? It occurs to me that one could produce a similar effect of staying power with a needle, thread, and some ties.”

Vex frowns. “I want it to be comfortable for him,” she says. “And _isn’t_ there a magical solution? My hat never falls off, I’ve noticed that.”

“I could probably do something of the sort, yes.” He yawns, rubbing his forehead. “May I see the hat?”

Zahra hands it over, and he inspects it and glances down at Trinket’s head. “One hundred gold,” he says at last. “And that’s if you don’t need it until tomorrow. If you want it this morning, one hundred fifty.”

Vex yelps in outrage. “It’s a _hat_.”

“It’s magic,” Gilmore says unsympathetically, though not unkindly. “If you want me to sew some straps on, I’ll do that for free.”

“You are dating my brother!”

Gilmore raises an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting that your brother should prostitute himself for my magical services?”

“Honestly?” Vex says. “Yes!”

“Oh, thanks, sister, that’s really nice.”

Gilmore laughs. “Be that as it may, my personal relationship with your crew extends to good deals—which this is—discounted rooms, and free drinks. Beyond that, we do have a _professional_ relationship, and that means you do have to pay.”

“How about this lovely ruby necklace instead?” Zahra says, proffering something they’d stolen from the last ship, a passenger carrier with several very wealthy families on board.

“Those are garnets,” Gilmore says. “Really, Captain Hydris, don’t we know each other better than this?”

“Well, looks like we can’t get the bear a hat,” Scanlan says cheerfully. “Whoops, too bad, maybe Trinket will just have to stay behind!”

“Sixty gold,” says Zahra, ignoring him, “and the necklace, and you enchant the hat this morning.”

“Please?” Vax says, grinning. He leans even closer. “I’ll definitely make it worth your while.”

“So you _are_ prostituting yourself for my magical services,” Gilmore says, not sounding displeased with that, as one of his arms snakes around Vax’s waist.

“I never said I wasn’t open to the idea,” Vax says, leaning up to kiss him lightly. “Come on, you can pretend it takes longer than it actually does, and I can be _very_ grateful.”

“We can all hear you,” Vex says. “Please stop talking about all the sex you’re planning on having.”

They both ignore her.

“Well,” Gilmore says. “All right, then.”

“Oh, _come on_ ,” Scanlan says.

—

“Hey, motherfuckers!” Grog yells, grinning wildly at the sailors on the other ship, who are staring at his crazed, bloody smile with some horror. “We have a bear!”

Trinket growls obligingly, his hat perched on his head at a jaunty angle and not so much as twitching in the wind.

“Yeah!” Pike says, leaping over the gap between the ships, mace in one hand and shield in the other. “And we’re not afraid to use him!”

“Why do you have a _bear_ ,” Vex hears someone on the other ship say. “You’re _pirates_. Why is there a bear?!”

“Because the captain thinks with her downstairs brain,” Scanlan mutters, and Vex laughs.

“Oh, yeah, like you’re one to talk,” she says.

“I’m a very intellectual guy, the kind of person who thinks things through,” Scanlan says, which she ignores, because there’s really no point in arguing with such blatant lying. “On the other hand, no way we would have a bear if you weren’t sleeping with Zahra.”

“Yeah,” she says, grinning. “But I _am_ sleeping with Zahra. What do you think we should get next, a tiger? Keyleth likes tigers.”

Scanlan chokes and makes a horrified noise, and she grins, leaping into battle and laughing as Trinket rolls right into a sailor and pins him down, looking up at her for approval. “Good boy!” she shouts. “You get those nasty merchants! Then we can find some lovely treasure and bring it home, hmm?”

Trinket huffs agreeably and throws himself forward, and she’s right behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> Title (and series title) from, again, "Sister, Sail" by Zoe Mulford. Beta'd by Rose (acommonrose on tumblr, zornslemon on AO3).
> 
> This series is marked as incomplete because there is _one more_ planned follow-up. It will be about this length and get written...eventually. I have no idea when. I am not, however, planning to write an actual sequel, because "now seek the far horizon (sister, sail)" honestly feels solidly complete to me. There's nothing I really feel the need to add to that, except for these little pieces of silliness, which are just for fun.
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr](https://attilarrific.tumblr.com)!


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